Holding Up the Sky (56 page)

With the move to the thatched house, a few other things changed. I had stopped going to church, choosing instead to join a home group that Rags and Barry were part of. They met each week in the home of one of the members, just as we had done in 'Maritzburg several years before when I was still part of Sizwe. I felt I now had bigger questions to ask, ones that were not addressed in the course of a church service or the minister's sermon each week. Home group allowed me to grapple with these issues via a dialogue, rather than the monologue that the church provided.

While we joined the home group as a family, Teboho continued to go back to Mohlakeng each Sunday, taking Mama to church there but also attending church himself. Initially, he would be gone until lunchtime but as time passed, he and Mama would only return in time for supper, Teboho needing or wanting to spend the whole day in the township. Sometimes the kids went with him but as the time away from home extended, they chose to stay with me.

I found his absences confusing. When we were together he seemed to resent the fullness of my life, claiming that I neither needed him nor loved him enough. Yet when he was away, it was as if he did not need us, or perhaps me. I wanted him home more; I wanted him to be there when he promised to be. I had lost track of how many times we arranged to go somewhere and I was left standing, waiting, not knowing whether to go on alone. It felt as though the magic of our family's weekend trips away was trickling like water through my fingers.

I could see that our marriage had become an art of compromise. His concession was to live away from the township, this home in the suburbs less of a refuge for others than our home had once been; mine was to allow him time to do what he wished to do, to continue to love and support his extended family, to raise the children as Africans, not encouraging them to be white and middle class.

In terms of giving him space, I was not naive enough, particularly in the light of my own actions and the events in Tasmania, to think he might not be seeing other women. But there was nothing concrete to confirm that he was. One day I asked him if he had ever slept with anyone else, not in an accusing tone, but with an intention of telling him about my affair, hoping to make the conversation more one of coming clean to each other and moving forward. After a hesitation, he told me he'd had several one-night stands, mostly out of need during the many months of celibacy after Chaba's birth. He had sought out sex as a release rather than turning to other women for intimacy. He told me that these one-night stands included sleeping with someone from work while I was down in 'Maritzburg during the sanding of the wooden floors. While I was taken aback by his confession, I was suddenly gripped by the realisation that he had slept with another women while I was breastfeeding our son.

‘Did you use protection?' I asked fearfully.

‘It wasn't planned, so no I don't think I did', he replied cautiously.

The intention I had held to tell him my own truth, forgive him his mistakes, hope he could forgive mine and move on was suddenly subsumed by such ferocious anger that I could barely speak. What if he had HIV, had given it to me and I had passed it on to Chaba?

‘You need to have an HIV test and you need to do it now', I said coldly, before standing up and walking away. The next few weeks were like living in a world frozen by a witch's spell; all conversations, all thoughts hung in mid air until the answer to the only question that mattered was known.

Mum and Dad, Jon and his new wife Androulla arrived to spend the December holidays with us, just in time to celebrate Chaba's third birthday. We decided to go all out and do a theme party, with Peter Pan being Chaba's first choice. We invited Moss and Khumo who brought their son and two cousins; Marlett and her daughter; Jeremy and Mmathabo from work; as well as a few of Chaba's friends from school and down the street. Chaba was dressed as Peter Pan, Mello was Wendy, I was a mermaid and Jon was Captain Hook, with all our guests dressed as pirates, Tinkerbell or Lost Boys.

We had done up the courtyard as the various locations in the story: the swings became the pirate ship, we had the Indian village and the home of the Lost Boys. Just before we cut the cake, Wendy was captured by Captain Hook, sending Peter Pan scuttling off to the pirate ship to save her. Once Peter Pan had put a sword through Captain Hook and he came tumbling to the ground, all our young guests took it as their cue to leap on top of him and keep him there. Teboho was the designated photographer, capturing all the precious memories on the same camera that Uncle Jim had given him in Tasmania.

After Chaba's party, our whole clan headed off down to Cape Town and the Garden Route on a ten-day holiday. While the HIV tests had come back negative for myself and Teboho, there was now a chasm between us fuelled by my simmering anger at his thoughtlessness. The family holiday was overflowing with happy memories, yet the tension must have been obvious to all. I remember with some shame taking it out on Mello at one point, as she stood too close to the edge of a cliff for my comfort, despite her uncle and aunt standing nearby enjoying the view. When she refused to move back, I went over and grabbed her roughly by the arm and told her to do as she was told, before yanking her away. I saw that I had both hurt and confused her, but in my anger, I was unable to take a step back myself. I also knew that I would never have been so rough with Chaba. To my shame, my frustrations were more easily vented with Mello, compounding the rocky journey of our love.

I was diverting my anger rather than addressing the real issues with Teboho. I don't know if I was afraid of a repeat of the exchange in Tasmania, or whether I felt that if I tried to take it on, the whole house of cards would come tumbling down.

All too soon, the holiday was over and Mum, Dad, Jon and Androulla left to go back to Sydney. Mama returned from Mohlakeng where she had been for the last five weeks, allowing us space to host my family. Teboho and I went back to work and things remained unsaid.

Several months passed before I realised how very tired I was with all the deadlines, travel and strain. Colleen phoned me and said she was going to splash out and spend a week at a spa in Stellenbosch in June. She asked me to join her. Teboho, with a look somewhere between that of a beaten dog and a hopeful child, said he had no objection. Was he thinking that a break would do us good and I would come back refreshed, or was he afraid that this was another step towards a different life for me? With that look, I knew that despite all that had passed between us in recent months, he still loved me and wanted things to change.

Stellenbosch is wine country, less than an hour's drive east of Cape Town, with sharp peaks and plunging green valleys. It's an area that exudes rest and relaxation, regeneration and pleasure. We had stopped there briefly on our trip with my family in December, but this would be the first time I stayed here. My holidays had always consisted of visits to family in rural areas far from tourist attractions such as Stellenbosch; my luxurious room at the Hydro was in sharp contrast to the wattle and daub homes or tin shacks that were my usual accommodation. While I initially felt guilty for leaving the family behind and spending money just on myself, I knew I needed something dramatically different to shift me out of the state I was in. I was most grateful not to be making this journey alone.

Colleen lived in Cape Town, though she had grown up in Jo'burg. She had been to university at Wits, moving in circles with the likes of Ruth First, Joe Slovo and Steve Biko, people who to me seemed like famous characters from a novel or history book rather than ordinary people who were once studying for a degree, just as I had. During those early years, she found that the principles of communism, of equity, of sharing, and the intellectual analysis of a society that she had observed from the window of a white working class house, resonated with her and felt like home.

At university, she came to know others who heard a similar tolling of the bell and was soon in organisations that put her on the wrong side of the political divide. She and her circle of friends were arrested before they could finish their degrees, held and tortured in solitary confinement before feeing into exile. Many ended up in London, but Colleen and her then husband returned to Swaziland as members of the ANC, where they worked to safely exit ANC members from South Africa. Ultimately the South African government's raids stretched like reaching fingers beyond its borders and into Swaziland, forcing Colleen, her husband and their two small boys to move to Zimbabwe. Colleen and her family lived there for many years, working in development and politics, writing, publishing and researching, before finally returning home to South Africa after the elections in 1994. My life felt bland compared to hers, and though I would not wish for the hardships she suffered, I valued the wisdom they had generated.

Colleen and I arrived at the Hydro, both in need of repair. Colleen needed rest, a place to give up smoking and the discipline and good food to shed some weight. I, however, needed to put on weight as the demands of work and a strained marriage had caused me to shed pounds unintentionally. Our daily routine was breakfast in our rooms followed by a hydro treatment, a massage and an afternoon activity of our choice. We could exercise in the pool or at the tai chi classes, or we could choose another treatment such as aromatherapy or reflexology. The grounds also drew us outside for long leisurely walks on many afternoons, allowing us to talk through all the thoughts that were surfacing. Coming from a long line of vivid dreamers, I started a dream book that week in an effort to try to understand what was going on for me in my life. On our afternoon walk on the second day, I recounted one of my first dreams.

‘Last night I dreamt that Mum and Dad moved out to South Africa to be with me', I began.

‘Interesting', said Colleen. ‘I always imagined that you had moved here to start a life away from them.'

‘Well, I couldn't have got further away if I'd tried. Any further and I would have started coming back. I've often wondered about that, but I don't think it was the issue. I think I was running towards something, not away. But in this dream, the only place that Mum and Dad could live was in a rural village, somewhere near Itsoseng. When I went to see their place, it was a three-roomed shack made of wooden planks with a mud brick floor. Mum told me she was doing some part-time work to try and earn money, but Dad couldn't work because of his dementia and the Parkinson's disease.'

‘Does your father's dementia affect him all that much?' Colleen asked.

‘No. At the moment it's just an occasional episode, but the doctors are telling Mum that he will decline in the years to come', I replied. ‘But in the dream he couldn't really leave the house and so Mum had to take care of everything. I became so distressed with their standard of living that I began counting the wooden planks and the nails in each plank, as if that would somehow show them how impoverished their lives had become. Eventually I convinced them to go back home, though I was very upset that they were leaving. Mum then said that she was actually relieved as she had felt so cut off from the world living in Africa.'

‘How fascinating. The life of the woman in your dream is impoverished because she has chosen to live in South Africa and when she is finally convinced to leave, she feels relieved. She realises she has been in denial about how cut off she was. Who do you think the dream is about, your mother or you?' she asked.

‘I think I've been financially impoverished, working for peanuts and supporting the extended family whenever I have been earning some money. But I certainly wouldn't say my life has been impoverished overall. I think it's been rich with experiences I wouldn't have otherwise had', I responded, perhaps slightly defensively.

‘But on an emotional level, you've been quite cut off in order to stay with it. Even sexually, you've been cut off.'

I had told only Colleen and Marlett of the affair. Since then, Colleen and I had talked about how differently I viewed myself sexually after that. Something of the early repression had been lifted, though I still felt constrained in my marriage, unable or unwilling to open up, particularly since Teboho had spoken about his having unprotected sex.

‘I think emotionally that's true, but perhaps the sexual restraint had nothing to do with being here. I think I brought that with me. I think a lot about what attracted Teboho and I to each other. Perhaps we somehow recognised the emotional immaturity and idealism in the other and it felt welcome, familiar.'

‘I think you're right', Colleen agreed, looking out at the valley below as we topped the rise of the hill we were slowly climbing. ‘I believe we are attracted to people who meet our needs at that time. The question is, can you grow together over time as those needs change?'

‘I reckon Teboho is a bit threatened by where my life is taking me. I know I've changed. I want more now for myself than I did before. I think he believes I've broken a promise.'

‘He fell in love with the woman ferrying children out of a township during the Seven Day War. He thought you were a soldier who would fight with him in his cause: capable, brave, self-suffcient, someone who he wouldn't have to take care of, someone who could take care of herself.'

‘I think taking care of others makes him feel better about himself, as if it diverts attention from having to look at his life, his history. Sometimes I think of him as Peter Pan, collecting Lost Boys', I refected, my mind casting back to Chaba's birthday party. ‘Then he meets Wendy, who he is in love with but also wants to be mothered by. I fell in love with Peter Pan–who wouldn't?–but it's been ten years now', I said, my voice trailing off. ‘I think, like Peter Pan, he doesn't want to be constrained, even by his own shadow. He wants to be free to fly away whenever he wishes, off to his Lost Boys, off to fight pirates.'

After a long silence, broken only by the sounds of our footsteps, Colleen finally asked: ‘Do you think he can partner you–strong, powerful you?'